Sol 5.6

  1. What huntresses are these, though no adepts,

    and riders who never travel?

  2. They have mounted, though granted no honor,

    pulpits, yet they are no orators.

  3. And what food is this, left out in the wilderness,

    that draws death close to life?

  4. And a house of fellowship, loud with voices

    of many races and many tongues,

  5. where its captives remain pinioned.

    And what spears are these that never charge,

  6. unaccustomed to blood,

    nor amid pursuit and raids

  7. are they dyed—not with the clotted blood of warriors,

    but with the gleam of death that makes good its threat:

  8. a secret death, affording no escape,

    that lodges in breasts and throats—

  9. the point’s clinging barb, captivity’s lock.

    Upon their upper ends are mounted

  10. spearheads that are never lowered,

    stripped bare of feather-quills.

  11. Raised upon the shaft, they might be taken

    for rams’ tails mounted there.

Sol 5.6